


Septet

by Lore55



Series: Counting Courtships [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Interspecies Relationships, Non Explicit, Romance, Selkie - Freeform, atypical to the mythos, finished work, human character, poetry and story, selkie character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 18:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8764351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lore55/pseuds/Lore55
Summary: Seven. It was always seven for her. A number that repeated, all the time, every time. The only thing that had never come in sevens were tears she shed into the sea. As it happened, she didn't need them to bring in the man with seal eyes.





	1. Sealife

**Author's Note:**

> Okay! This is first story in my series, Counting Courtships (Or whatever name I stick with). The number theme here is seven.
> 
> There is nothing hugely inappropriate in here, except for allusions to sex and a naked seal man who left his skin behind. No graphic details for that either.
> 
> Each chapter is exactly 3 pages, including a seven lined poem at the end. The first chapter is a Pleiades. 
> 
> I will update every Monday and Friday until I'm done.

Seven.

 

Seven was a Strange number. For Delilah Verdell it was especially abnormal, in the sense that things Happened in seven’s. She broke her arm in seven places when she was seven days past seven years. She lived on the seventh house away from the seventh street in the city of Septet.

 

She took seven steps onto the beach of the Cove of Heptad when she saw seven men in the waves. The water crashed towards her and Delilah stepped forwards, letting the waves rolled to her ankles and pull at her long skirt. She could still see her house, it’s windows dark without anyone inside to light lamps. It sat on top of the rise from the beach, a cottage with tomato plants winding around fencing.

 

The ocean receded, pulling her clothes with it. She didn’t stumble.

 

She _did_ wave when she noticed that one of the men had seen her. She didn’t recognize them, but the city was scattered these days. People came and went, it was more than possible that they had only been there for a few weeks. Since the last time Delilah had walked the beach with her basket, looking for treasures.

 

He waved back, drawing the attention of his fellows who followed suit. Delilah waited, in case they were inclined to come back to land. They waited, in case she was inclined to leave it.

 

The young woman turned back to her treasure hunt.

 

She liked to do this. To walk the sand as the sun sunk into the water, burning away the day and its troubles. She used to do it every sunday, before she got so busy working with the lye. Now it was the first time she had been able to come out since the frosts of winter had left her window sills. The seals and the fish would be back to Septet soon, and with them would come the seasonal fishermen. Business would pick up for everyone in the town, from the baker, to the candler, to Delilah herself, with her soaps and richly colored clothes.

 

She had been preparing all winter for it.

 

Something pale caught her eye and she leaned down, plucking a broken circle from the sand. The creature that once lived within had been pecked free by the gulls already, leaving it an empty husk.

 

Delilah set it back into the sand and moved on, stepping lightly. Her footprints sunk into the sand, bare imprints marking her travel before the ocean took them away. The ocean took everything away, in the end. It gave and it took back. It brought in sand and dragged it away. It gave them food and took their land. It brought them travellers and took them away too. The ocean was where women bore children and where the clerics poured the ashes of the dead. It was their beginning and their end.

 

Delilah picked up a pink shell the shape of the moon. She ran her fingers on the rough edges before setting it in her basket. She wandered on, finding a ocean-smooth stone the color of a sunset. She collected long stick so worn by the water it felt like velvet to her fingers, a shell that had once housed a crab. The sea gave her two more stone’s, one black as pitch the other white as snow. She kept the white one before she bent to collect a blackened sticker from the grains.

 

A shadow fell across her, cast not by the drowning sun, but a man. She looked up at him, squinting against the light that haloed his soft face and dark hair. There was a smile on his lips and when she accepted his hand and stood, Delilah was amazed by how handsome he was.

 

Even with a thin scar across his hairline he was still beautiful. It was a word she had never applied to a man before. Sometime between when he left the water and found her he had put on trousers.

 

“A shark's tooth.” His voice was rich and warm, his smile matched. She looked down at the black point in her palm, held between them.

 

“Is that what this is?” she asked. The tooth had a roughness on a broad edge that had not been worn away yet. Part of the tooth jutted back, giving it the look of a letter she had never learned to read.

 

“Yes. It’s from an Angel Shark,” he touched the sharp end. “You can tell by the size, and the shape. See the way it bends backwards?”

 

“Like a fisherman's hook,” she paralleled. “I didn’t know sharks had angels.”

 

The man smiled. “They’re small sharks. They don’t come to the coasts much. Have you ever seen a ray?” Her eyes trailed from his face down, to a scar that crossed over his ribs. Like a waning moon.

 

“I’ve lived here my entire life. I’ve seen rays,” she promised, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. Handsome strangers didn’t need her sass when they were trying to teach her things.

 

“They look a bit like that, only more like sharks,” he said, “And something like sand.”

 

Delilah smiled at him, half a crescent pulling up further one side than the other.

 

“My, you have a way with words,” she teased. She set the tooth, a tiny thing, into her basket with the others.

 

“I don’t talk to pretty women much,” he returned, not looking at all as bashful as his words would have her believe. “Forgive me?”

 

Delilah considered it, and looked at her collection. Only six.

 

“If you help me find another tooth, I’ll take it into consideration,” she offered slyly. The man took her arm in his own, tucking the long stick she hand between them.

 

“I can accept that,” he flashed perfectly straight teeth at her. Delilah ducked to hide her own gapped smile.

 

A glance over her shoulder revealed the other men collecting what must have been the rest of their clothes out of a crevice in a stone by her home.

 

She walked with him for a time, combing through the sand with her eyes. She was aware that now and again he would look at her, but she did not peer back for fear of being caught by his eyes, a shade of brown so dark she thought she could vanish in them.

 

It occurred to her by the time the sun was so low their shadows were taller than trees, that she had never heard his name. When she posed the question he showed her his teeth again.

 

“Fynn,” he introduced himself, “Like the part of the fish.”

 

Delilah smiled at him and stopped when they were in front of her house. A name. That was seven treasure’s enough.

 

“Good night, Fynn,” she steps from him, plucking her stick neatly from his grasp twirling before he had time to process that she was gone from his arm. She made it to her yard before he called out to her, drawing the soap maker to a stop. She turned to look down the beach at him, standing where she had left him.

 

“What is your name?” he pleaded.

 

She smiled, though it was sardonic in nature.

 

“Delilah,” she told him. Like the traitor.

 

_The sea is life, the sea is death_

_Those people who watch see it draw breath_

_Tempest winds_

_Torrential rains_

_Templed coral on sea floor plains_

_Till end of time, till end of birth_

_The seafarer's life, in those hands of hers_


	2. Delightful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She had never known a man to marvel at her craft so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we will see, at the end, a Rime Royal.

Her clothes fluttered in a long streams, pulling at the lines of thin strings that held them at bay. Brown and red skirts, white shirts, and one dress that was a mash of dyed colors and stains that would never come out. A mottled dress she only used for work.

 

While they dried she sat at the base of her hill, on a stone that was just the right size to serve as bench while Delilah did her needlework.

 

When someone blocked the sun she merely peaked up to see a brown shirt and fathomless eyes. He had been gone for a week.

 

“Hello Fynn,” she greeted, setting her work on her lap to look up properly. She didn’t want to be rude. She had more manners than that.

 

Fynn, it seemed, had a few less than she, for he fell onto the stone at her side without an invitation. He was long, and in the light of the day it was easy to see that his hair was the same shade as a vole’s fur. Dark brown, rich and smooth. It was long enough to fall past his shoulders. It was unbound, floating freely. Most men she knew kept theirs cut short or tied back as neatly as her own.

 

“Hello, Delightful,” he smiled cheerily at her. A flush darkened her skin.

 

“My name is Delilah,” she argued.

 

He just kept smiling, like nothing could get him to stop. “ ‘Delightful’ seems more apt.”

 

Delilah tried not to laugh, and failed.

 

“Delightful as I might be, I have work to do,” she warned him, picking up her needle again. His shoulders rolled in a move as fluid as the sea herself.

 

“Don’t let me keep you.”

 

She didn’t. She stitched through the white shirt with blue dyed thread, curving it around and through with skill and ease. It formed patterns she had been making for years.

 

“Waves!”

 

The excitement in his voice startled a laugh out of Delilah. She looked at him, eyes wider with surprise. He was staring at the cloth with wonder, as though he had never seen embroidery before.

 

Delilah tied off the and and passed the shirt to him, so he could inspect her work. There were white tops of foam on the waves that she had finished, shining silver over the shade-off white of the shirt.

 

Fynn looked it over, bringing it closer to his face to look at the work, his eyes taking it all in. Brown eyes, like a seal. seal eyes.. Delilah felt something like pride well up in her chest. It was flattering for her to be recognized like this, by anyone. People complimented her work, paid her for it, but none wondered over it the way Fynn was, as if it were some jewel from a land far away.

 

“You have an amazing talent,” he complimented, running his fingers across her work. They were smooth, she noted, free of callouses that came from hard work. She wondered what he did that could afford him such soft skin. Her own was thick and scarred, worked hard from harsh chemicals and stray needles.

 

“It’s just practice,” she denied. It took her a long time to get to where she was, and more mishaps than she cared to remember.

 

“You must practice hard,” he handed it back and, to Delilah’s surprise, lay down on the stone, stretching next to her. He was totally at ease. She was reminded of a cat.

 

“I have,” she agreed, “What about you, what do you do, Fynn like the part of the fish?”

 

“I travel, mostly. With my brothers. You saw them the night we met.”

 

“A vagabond?” she jested. She hadn’t known that all seven of them were brothers. She only knew Fynn.

 

He laughed and her heart leapt up, higher into her chest.

 

“Something like that,” he said. His eyes shone with mirth.

 

Down the beach, seals started barking.

 

Delilah looked over and smiled, warmth in her eyes and kindness in her mouth. Fynn moved closer until his arm brushed hers, warm and solid. He was lean and muscles, she could feel it. That did little to explain his soft, perfect skin.

 

“Do you like the seals?” he asked.

 

She nodded, slowly, unable to tear her eyes away from the amassing gathering of brown fur, so smooth and shiny in the light of the sun. They were boisterous, once one started calling the rest joined in. Young one chased each other across the sand, kicking up small waves of pale gold behind their hind feet.

 

“I love them,” she said truthfully. “They’re always here. The fishermen, I’ve heard, have learned to work with them to catch the most. My father said they were the smartest creatures in the ocean. My mother said they were the most beautiful creature on the land.”

 

Her father, long gone to the pull of the ocean. Her mother, long gone to the pull of fever. They had raised her on this beach. Taught her to walk on its sand and sail in its water. They had done their best for her, but in the end her marriage had fallen through when Collin married her neighbor, Mary, and moved them both inland, and her dear parents and passed, leaving her alone.

 

“What do _you_ say?” Fynn asked. His breath ghosted across her neck, prickling her skin.

 

She hadn’t known he had gotten so close.

 

“I think that they’re both. You don’t have to be ugly to be smart, you don’t have to be stupid to be beautiful,” she said after a moment's thought.

 

Fynn made a strange sound that Delilah didn’t know how to identify.

 

“You would know about that.”

 

Delilah couldn't tell if he had called her ugly or beautiful, smart or stupid. She turned to asked but found herself staring at the hill face, dotted with yellow and white flowers. While she had been watched the seals Fynn had moved, and she found herself tracing his body to when he was putting his head in her lap, heedless of the danger of a needle poking the back of his skull.

 

“What are you doing?” she asked, losing her original question. Fynn looked up at her, squinting at the sun.

 

“I thought your skirts looked comfortable. And I was right!”

 

Delilah didn’t know what to do. So she covered his face with the shirt and got back to work, ignoring the laugh that lifted the cloth up in her hands.

 

Fynn was unnaturally good natured.

 

_With roaring waves and gentle tides_

_With rolling foam and clear blue skies_

_Through blackened storms and darkest waves_

_In beams of light that algae craves_

_With shining fish and sleek brown fur_

_On the waves the dual lived blur_

_Hear them sing the songs of the sea_


	3. A Storm of Prayers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A storm ravages the island and a vagabond appears in the doorway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The form for this poem is a Rondelet.

It had been seven years since a storm like this had swept through the Pinniped coast. It tore at the house, ripping at Delilah’s shingles and threatening to pull her shutters right off the side of her house. Her door trembled, her fireplace was banked for fear of flying coals. 

 

She sat with only an oil lamp and enough light to patch torn clothes. 

 

Things were flung against the sides of the house, clattering angrily when they struck. Wind howled like wolves, screamed like the dying. 

 

Delilah tried to concentrate on her work. 

 

She stayed by the small flame and prayed, to the Mother of the Sea, to the God of Land, to the Father of the Sun and the Sister’s of the Storms, that the seals might be safe. 

 

She should have prayed for herself. She should have prayed for her sister in the town or her cousins on the water, but her mind wandered from them to the seals. To the sleek fur and the strong bodies, to the play-filled calls and the powerful flippers. 

 

She prayed for the mothers yet to whelp and the pups who had never seen clouds before and now knew Sisters Thunder, and Lightning. She prayed for the bulls who fought so hard to hold their grounds, who held their rights so tightly. 

 

A knock on the door surprised her so much she almost dropped a skirt into the lamp itself. With a quick check to make sure it wasn’t singed or smoking Delilah hurried to the door. She braced herself and pulled it open. 

 

The force of the wind nearly knocked her off her feet. It pushed her back a foot seven inches before she dug in her heels and squinted, trying to see out into the storm. 

 

What she saw, was Fynn. 

 

The man looked cold, miserable, and halfway drowned. His seal eyes were missing their warmth and mirth, replaced with wide eyed fright. 

 

“Come in here,” she ordered shortly, and he obeyed without a fuss. He helped her shove the door closed and brace it with a long board across the front and a chair under even that. Only once they were locked in safely did she sink to the floor and look up at Fynn. 

 

He was shivering badly. A puddle had already formed under his feet. 

 

“Take off your clothes,” she said, shooing him towards her small light source, “Before you catch cold. I’ll get the blankets.” 

 

She was glad the Fynn didn’t argue with him. Not that she thought he had much shame. Their first meeting he had been wearing clothes only on the lower half of his body. This wouldn't be more awkward than that had been, and that had gone perfectly well. 

 

When she turned back Fynn had spread his clothes across her work space. Delilah came from behind to wrap a quilt around his shoulders before spreading a skin blanket of thick fox fur across the wood for the two of them to sit on. 

 

Fynn lowered himself to the fur, looking down at it. There was a furrow in his brow. 

 

“This is, a very nice fur,” he said. It lacked his normal cheer, or any authenticity. 

 

“It belongs to Mrs. Herse. She asked me to repair it. I don’t keep furs personally,” she confessed. They were lucky though. The fur was warm that night. She passed another blanket to Fynn and helped his spread it across his lap. 

 

“Why don’t you keep any?” Fynn asked. His hair was still sticking against his skin, plastered to his skull. Delilah fetched a towel and draped it over his head, starting to rub through the soaking locks. She was gentle, pushing through and drying him off. 

 

“I don’t like the practice. Killing something to eat it is one thing, or making clothes of furs farther north is a necessity. Here, however, it is little more than wasteful vanity. A barbaric show.” She saw his mouth curve from under the hood the towel offered. 

 

“Is that so?” he asked, some of his normal humor returning. 

 

“It is,” she leaned down, pressed her lips to the top of his head when he couldn't see it. He certainly felt it, for he laughed at her and reached to pull the towel back. By the time his eyes were freed she had sunk into the furs, her work in her hands. 

 

Fynn looked at her with his seal eyes, some of the light back in them. 

 

“You work well with your hands,” he praised. “I wish I was half as good at art as you are.” 

 

Delilah laughed softly. “It’s hard work. I could show you,” she offered, holding out a needle to him. Fynn squinted at the tiny metal and looked down at his slim, soft hands. 

 

“No, thank you,” he shook his head. “I will leave that the expert, Delightful.” 

 

Delilah felt her heart leap inside of her chest and she looked somewhere else, anywhere else. The result was a prick to the finger. The young woman wiped the blood on her skirt and went back to work her sewing. She looked at Fynn every now and again while she busied her hands, until the light in the lamb flickered and burned out. 

 

In the dark, the only time to see was when the lightning flashed through the cracks in her shuttered windows, exploding across the floor and lighting up the dyed cloth she worked so hard on. It danced through embroidered swans and twisted along bars of floral scented soaps. 

 

Delilah tucked her lamp away, somewhere it wouldn’t get stepped on, and lay down in the thick furs. She had given Fynn both of her good blankets, and had no desire to feel around her home for more that were packed somewhere else. Besides, she had thick clothes and a long skirt. That was close enough, wasn't it? 

 

She could stay warm enough, until dawn rose or the storm broke. One had to happen before the other, but which it would be she couldn't tell. She doubted she would ever be able to predict the weather beyond knowing when clouds looked grey and swollen with rain. 

 

With an arm as a pillow she closed her eyes, trying to drift into the waves of dreams rather than staying awake and listening to the storm ravage her home. She had no doubt that it was pulling the village apart, throwing debris through windows and ripping carts apart in the street. 

 

It would take them a long time to repair all of the damage done. The grain might ruin if they didn’t manage to get it under a tarp before it was water logged and ruined. Worse, it might all be flooded away if the plains didn’t soak up most of the water. 

 

Most of their storms were showers. They didn’t need to worry about the fierce rage of the skies. Her people were more focused on the drive of the sea. 

 

Delilah was halfway asleep when something thick and warm fell across her side and a firm body touched her back. She didn’t bother craning her neck around. She wouldn’t be able to see Fynn anyhow in the dark of the one room house. 

 

“Are you warm enough?” she asked, leaning back against the young man. It was his back against hers rather than his chest. His arms didn’t touch her. 

 

“Yes,” he promised. “Good night, Delightful.” 

 

Delilah smiled softly and whispered, “Goodnight. “

 

_ Without wings they fly  _

_ Off the cliff will they strive _

_ Without wings they fly  _

_ Their voices rise, they are not shy _

_ Across the sand they drag, off of rocks they dive  _

_ In the ocean he will thrive _

_He can’t be caught, though you may try_


	4. Skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somethings do not belong on a beach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Saraband is what I'm told this chapters poetry form is.

The tide had left something on the beach that was not meant to be there. 

 

It was dark brown, a familiar short fur that would slice through water and shine in the sun. It was small and limp, caught in the teeth of two foxes. She didn’t know if they were fighting over it, but the young woman had every intent to stop it.

 

Delilah picked her way down the hill hurriedly, her skirt flying up around her legs. It flapped around her knees, making a big enough clatter that the foxes went running from their prize, long black legs stretching far while they bolted from the human girl, vanishing into Panic Grass with a flash of their dark winter coats, brown and white still shedding off. 

 

She stumbled to a stop in the sand, kicking it up and looking down at the brown pile. She had thought at first that it was a pup, ambushed after wandering too far off. Now she saw otherwise. 

 

Laying in the sand was a dark brown pelt of seal skin. 

 

It had no blood nor bone attached, it looked like a cloak that had not been shaped for a human, but to go back onto the animal when finished. She knelt in the sand, catching hold of it and lifting the fur into her hands. It was softer than she had ever imagined a seal would be. She could feel the precious oils that coated each hair, protecting it from the water and the salt of the ocean that they hunted in. 

 

She had never seen anything like it. Slowly, Delilah turned it in her hands, running her fingers across until they snagged on something. A tear. The skin had been pulled apart by the sharp teeth of the foxes, ripped cleanly from where it belonged on a shoulder. 

 

Delilah rose, looking after the foxes tracks. They lead away from her where they had run, and towards her with a drag mark. She followed the scuffs in the beach until she was standing in front of a gap in the stone. One she had seen seven men keep their clothes in some seven weeks past. 

 

It was filled with six other furs. 

 

Her fingers tightened on the pelt in her hands. Her fingers ran across it, away from the shoulder and down. The fur dipped over scar tissue where the ribs would be, had it been on a live animal. It was a crescent. A bite mark. 

 

The shape of a waning moon. 

 

Delilah looked forwards, then back, checking to see if anyone was around. If Fynn and his brothers were within sight. She had seen them wander off earlier that morning, down the road that lead into the heart of Septet. They weren’t back yet. 

 

Delilah tucked pelt into her basket and climbed back up the hill, stumbling only once on a rock she knew hadn’t been there before. Her mind wandered from the sand in her clothes to the songs in her memory, half forgotten from her mother’s voice so many years ago. 

 

Songs of handsome men and beautiful women, free of single form but trapped without their skins. She had thought them fabled, brought to their island from her mother's home, alive only in words and thoughts and the passing suspicion. 

 

Delilah locked her door behind her and cleared a space on the table. She shoved the patched shirts and new skirts into a basket to deliver later in exchange for coin, replacing them with the torn skin. She spread it out, slipping a thin board on the inside to keep one end separated from the other. A lamp was lit and set beside it to help her see before she started hunting, looking for fishing lines. Regular string would not hold this together correctly. 

 

For all she knew the line wouldn't either. She had no idea if there was a magicked threat she was meant to use, or if it was possible to repair the pelt at all, but she would try. 

 

Seal eyes flashed in her mind. A straight tooth smile and soft brown hair. 

 

She  _ had  _ to try. 

 

Delilah found what she was hunting for a box that held her father's old things. It was shoved away, hidden in a corner. Most of the house was occupied by draped clothes or wooden boxes filled with soaps, separated by scent. Lavender, vanilla, honey, and roses. Some were plain blocks, others shaped like shells or flowers. She kept her lye and dyes under the floorboards, where they would stay out of the way. There wasn’t really a single place that had any room on it. Even her bed, pushing into one corner, functioned as storage during the daylight hours. 

 

Delilah searched further through her sewing needles until she found the one she needed. It was thick and sharp, made to go through the pelts that were worn for fashion and function. It was the hardiest needle she had ever owned, bought when Mr. Fowler had requested she add thick beaver fur to his fine coat. She rarely used it since. 

 

With needle and thread, or something like thread, in hand Delilah pulled up her stool and got to work. 

 

It was hard. She had to dig her needle into the fur, push it through the skin and repeat that on the opposing side for just one stitch. The tear was long and far from neat, meaning she had to criss-cross to stitch it together in a way that looked natural. The line, at least, was hard to see among the fine fur of the seal’s pelt. It took her hours to complete.

 

Delilah was ashamed of the job. 

 

It was not neat or straight like her sewing lines usually were, like they were meant to be. It was not beautiful or perfect the way Fynn called her work. In her eyes it was a poorly done job. 

 

She had even gone to far as to bleed for it. The needle was sharper than her small ones, and when it came in contact were her calloused skin it pushed right through. The result was a foul tongue hissed out over the pelt and blood smeared across the skin inside. 

 

Delilah set the fur back into her basket, folded carefully, and tucked that away under her bed for safe keeping. She moved to the window to look outside, peering into the distance in hopes of seeing a line of four young men walking towards her. 

 

If they even counted as men. 

 

They were fair and male, but could such creature’s really be called ‘men’, or was the a word reserved for those of her species? Was that a word that could not be properly applied to the seven that haunted her cove, chasing tides and trading lives? 

 

Delilah wondered. 

 

She wondered about Fynn and his bright, brown eyes. She wondered about his brothers who she had never met properly despite seeing them many times. She wondered about where he came from, where he spent his time when he wore a different skin. 

 

Had she met him like that? Had she seen him slide into the water with grace and ease, slice through the waves with ability impossible to copy? Had Fynn known her father? Had he turned fish towards his ship in a blessing and an exchange, the way the old fisherman always described?  

 

She wondered while she waited, watching the shadows grow long while the day wore on. She waited for him to return, waited for seven shadows to fall across the road. 

 

Delilah found herself waiting a long time. So long that she had to light lamps for her vigil. So long that she doused those flames, cleared her bed and laid down. 

 

Fynn would be back. He had to come back for his skin. 

 

_ Of skin or fur  _

_ Of water or land _

_ With words and smile the maidens they lure  _

_ They swim the sea and ocean  _

_ Leave marks are left upon the coast  _

_ Regardless of their graceful motion _

_ Wisdom and joy do they boast _


	5. A Friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting pretty far in now! This chapter feature's a septet.

He was not back, not for seven days and seven nights. He and his brothers stayed in town that entire time, leaving their other lives behind. Delilah took it upon herself to check their skins every day, to ensure that none others were torn asunder or discovered by cunning scavengers. 

 

It was on her sixth day of walking out, intent on checking those skins, that she saw seven young men walking the beach, their heads down and tan skin bleached white. Fynn was at the base of the hill that lead to her home, shoving a tangle of dried grass away from the steps that she had let fall into disarray. She didn’t need them, now they were half forgotten in the sand and plants, corners of wood sticking out here and there where they hadn’t begun to rot. 

 

“What are you looking for?” she asked, watching Fynn push through piles of seaweed the tide had dragged in. His eyes were wide. He looked panicked. Delilah felt her heart turn with concern. 

 

She knew quite well what he was looking for. 

 

“My shirt,” he said, but his voice told otherwise. He was lying. She pursed her lips and clasped her hands in front of her. 

 

“I can make you a new one,” she offered kindly. She didn’t want to lie to him, and she wasn’t, technically, but she did not enjoy being lied to her face. 

 

It wasn’t that she blamed him. She knew the stories, she knew the tales, of men holding their wives skin hostage until she had born them many children. She knew the consequences of relations past between their People. 

 

Delilah had an aversion to liars. From her name, or from her former fiance it was hard to say, but it was there, and as much as she liked Fynn it wasn’t leaving just for him. 

 

“No, thank you. I just need to find this one,” he dismissed. He hadn’t even looked up at her. Delilah cocked her head. 

 

“You’ve been gone for a few days,” seven, to be exact, “perhaps someone else found it?” 

 

Fynn paled rapidly and she felt bad immediately. That had been a cruel thing for her to say. Delilah tucked her hair away from her face, looking at the sea instead of the creature before her. 

 

“Why don’t you come in?” she suggested, “I’m sure you shirt won’t get any further. And you might see something you like more inside.” 

 

“I doubt that,” Fynn dismissed. 

 

Even if she knew what he meant Delilah was still hurt. She drew back, her face falling. Frynn’s head snapped up, realization dawning on his face. 

 

“I didn’t mean to imply- You make very nice clothes!” It was the first time Delilah had seen him trip over his own tongue. She turned from him with a swirl of her skirt and marched back to her house. 

 

Her door was left ajar when she swept to the bed, pulling her basket from underneath. She hauled it onto the bed and pulled the skin out. It was now smooth and perfect. Her stitches had been removed on the fifth day, when she realized that the skin sealed together had patched itself under the firm hold and guidance of her work. 

 

The door creaked and she heard a sharp intake of breath. 

 

Delilah’s head snapped, her eyes widening a fraction. She hadn’t realized that Fynn had followed her inside. She had thought he would stay out there and keep looking. Not follow her inside.  

 

“I thought you didn’t keep pelt's.” His voice was high with worry and heavy with accusation. Delilah held the skin to her stomach. “I thought you said it was barbaric.” 

 

“It is,” she said swiftly. “I found foxes fighting over it.” 

 

“What will you do with it?” he asked, stepping inside. The light from the door spilled in at his heels. She could barely see his dark eyes, but she saw the whites around them. They were wide. She had scared him. 

 

“Have you heard the story of Delilah? From the mainland?” she asked, instead of answering him. She ran her thumbs carefully over the small bump of an ear. Fynn was staring hard at the skin. 

 

“No,” he said. He glanced at her eyes, then back at the furs. 

 

Delilah lowered herself to the bed. “Sit,” she said, and he jerked to do so. It took her a moment to realize that she ordered him while holding the furs. He had no choice. Her stomach sank. 

 

“Delilah was the lover of a man named Sampson. Strongest in the land. She was offered silver if she could tell his enemies where his great strength came from,” she didn’t mince her words or tell a long tale. “She agreed, and found that his power came from his uncut hair. While he was sleeping she cut it off and made him helpless. She was selfish, and a traitor to the man who loved her.” Her fingers ran across the smooth fur of the pelt. Fynn was tense. 

 

“She betrayed him for money. And I wear her name.” 

 

“Do you wear her intentions?” Fynn asked. He looked between her and the fur, his gaze flickering. He was worried. Afraid. 

 

She set the fur in his arms, her fingers brushing the waning moon on his ribs. 

 

“I have no need of a fur, or a prisoner,” she told him. When she looked at his eyes they were wide. She leaned up, pushed her lips against his cheek. 

 

“You should mind where you keep that,” she murmured. “The foxes tore it.” His touched her hand. 

 

“You mended it?” he guessed. The fur,  _ his  _ fur, was held firm against his chest with the arm not reached to her. 

 

Delilah turned her hand, till his fingers fell into her calloused palm and she could wrap her own around his hand. Hold it. 

 

“You can’t wear it if it’s torn, can you?” she reasoned. Her smile was soft. Fynn squeezed her hand. 

 

“It would hurt,” he confessed. He leaned in until his forehead touched hers. He smelled like sea water and ladies perfume, his skin was warm against her own. 

 

“How long have you known?” he asked, quiet. “How long have you known what I am?” 

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said lightly. “You’re Fynn, a friend. What else would you be?” she didn’t want to say it outloud. In case she was wrong. In case she was just imprinting on children’s stories and age old songs. 

 

“You are a delightful person,” Fynn said. “Have I told you that before? 

 

Delilah smiled at him, a warm, small expression. He didn’t act like the legends said. He was beautiful, yes, and appealing beyond what could possibly be natural, but he hadn’t tried to get up her skirts. She hadn’t seen him or his brothers taking young maidens or dissatisfied housewives out into the waves. A thought passed for what they had been doing in town for seven days.  

 

“You might have mentioned it,” she pulled away, sat back on her bed. Fynn kept her hand in his own.

 

_ Needle and thread  _

_ Clothe and sea bed _

_ Tooth and claw  _

_ Both obey nature’s law _

_ Dual worlds of land and sea _

_ For two hearts stands one key _

_ They still stand hand in hand _


	6. Promises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This time, among sadness, I give you a sicillian septet.

The weather was turning when she asked, “Will you be warm enough?” 

 

Fynn looked down at her, his smile crooked. He wore no cloak nor coat, nor even a vest across the shirt she had sewn for him. Her embroidery, blue waves across black clothe, flowed across the edges of his clothes. His fur sat under the bed where she had left it this morning, when he had appeared on her doorstep. 

 

“I will be fine,” he promised. He reached up to touch her cheek. “I have thick fur to protect me when I reach the beach.” 

 

“Before that you have nothing,” she object. She placed her hands on his shoulders and he lay his palms to her hips. “Take a blanket, at least. I will find it in the morning.” 

 

Lamp light flickered through his dark eyes, softened from their predators shine. 

 

“You worry too much,” he chided. 

 

Delilah huffed softly and started unbuttoning his shirt. The clothes he came in were all pull upon or tie. She had added the small wooden pieces herself when she made it, and he struggled sometimes to get them apart. It was easier, and pleasantly intimate, for her to do it for him at the end of the day. 

 

She pushed the shirt off of his shoulders and it fell back onto her bed. Her fingers slid down his shoulders, ghosting his body. His muscles had vanished beneath a healthy layer of winter preparation, but the half moon remained. She traced it, slowly, and felt when his breath faltered. 

 

“I never asked,” she recalled. “What is this?” 

 

Fynn fell back onto her bed, rumpling the clothes left on it and pulling her down on top of him with a startled squeak. She landed on his soft stomach, wide eyes blinking at him when wild curls fell from their pins and into her face. 

 

“It was a whale,” he said. His voice was soft in the dark of the evening. “Have you seen them? The black and white orca’s that come in to the coast sometimes?” 

 

A shiver crawled up Delilah’s spine. 

 

“They play with pups,” she said softly. Chased the small seals into the deep water and pretended to release them to the shore. They always caught them before they could get to the safety of the land though. It was a sick game that Delilah found no delight in. 

 

“Yes,” Fynn confirmed. He lay still while she settled on him. It was easy to get comfortable on him in the fall. “They had me once. They dragged me out, into the ocean. I was young, I didn’t know it was death. My mother hadn’t had time to warn me, my brothers were not yet born to this world. He let me come back, almost. I could see the land, and my parents. My father shed his skin and went to a fishermen. He asked his help. Begged. 

 

The man agreed when my mother joined him, on the condition that she give him her skin.“

 

Delilah drew a quick breath. Fynn caught her and nodded, his smile had vanished into grimness and the woman wished she had never asked for his pain.  

 

“She agreed. The fishermen killed the orca, or chased it off. I don’t really know. But before he did the whale already sunk his teeth into me.” 

 

Delilah placed her palm across the moon, finger tips stretching to encompass it but it was impossible. The mouth of a whale was bigger than the hand of a seamstress. 

 

“I’m sorry,” she said genuinely. She pushed herself up, high enough to brush her lips to his forehead like she had all that time ago, during the storm. It felt like a lifetime. It was remembered like a dream. 

 

Fynn’s smile renewed, smaller than before. 

 

“She lives in town now,” he said. His arm draped across her lower back, keeping their bodies together. He was warm, and between them it was a comfortable heat. “I see her when I venture in.” 

 

“Is that why you stay in so long?” Delilah asked. 

 

Fynn nodded. “That, and the girls in Septet are very pretty.” 

 

Delilah huffed in mock offense and propped her chin in her fist, elevating her head above him. Her hair fell around his face, mingling in with his dark locks. 

 

“If they are pretty, what does that make me?” she asked, playing at vanity and envy. She was too old for those silly things now. Beyond marrying age. She would work the rest of her life, no doubt. 

 

“It makes you all the more delightful in comparison,” he said grandly, drawing a soft laugh out of the woman. She pushed her fingers into his hair, her eyes softened with his flattery. 

 

“You are a scoundrel,” she accused. He rolled them, flipping her until she lay beneath him, relaxed. He would do nothing to her she did not agree with. 

 

“A scoundrel?” he nuzzled the words into her neck, making her laugh harder when his breath tickled. “You wound me, kind woman.” 

 

“You aren’t denying it!” she retorted, giving him a shove. He left her, standing with the momentum she provided and dropped his trousers in the same motion. Delilah sat up and reached under the bed, pulling the basket she kept his furs in when he chose two legs. It was safer there. 

 

She picked it up and passed it to him. They were beyond the point of him pretending to care about the customs of man. Clothes, he had told her once, were pointless.

 

She had argued that humans had no natural fur, to which he retorted with pulling her hair, straight out of its ties. 

 

Fynn tucked the fur again his stomach and offered her a hand. She held it all the way to the door and outside, until they were at the edge of her yard. In her other hand was a lit lantern, flickering yellow light across the sand and their skin. Her stomach was turning with worry and sadness. 

 

He had told her this morning, that this would be the last she saw of him for some time. 

 

He was going away, leaving with the pod somewhere with more fish for the cold season. Somewhere where the whales didn’t know to find them. He didn’t know when he would be back. 

 

When they reached the fall of the hill he turned to her. His eyes were dark and his smile was sad. 

 

“Don’t stay away too long?” she asked. It was a soft plea. A pointless one. 

 

“I’ll be back,” he assured, tucking her hair away. “You’re my best friend. I can’t leave you forever.” 

 

Delilah smiled through clouded eyes when he stepped back and picked his way down half hidden stairs. 

 

She would have fit into a portrait that day in fall. The golden leaves of the trees that dotted that edges of the sand swirled around, chasing her hair out of its high pinned catch. Her pale skirts flowed in time with the beat of the wives. Grey clouds reached long fingers towards the shore from far off at sea. 

 

She stood there until her lamp was out and the sun was high, burning the sky. 

 

_ For love, for want  _

_ For laugh, for tear _

_ To know these one need not be a savant  _

_ Life is made of joy and fear _

_ For companion true need not a detent  _

_ With hearts that beat so near  _

_Ne’r shall they know a loves brisant_


	7. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we have reached the end. I send you off with a Septilla.

She was working on her embroidery again. The spring sun had poked through the clouds, giving enough light and warmth to warrant her leaving the house to sit on the stone bench. 

 

Delilah waited. She wanted, desperately, for a familiar shadow to fall across her hands. 

 

It had been seven years. Seven long, slow years since the young men had run across her beach. Since a boy with seal eyes had showed her what the teeth of an oceans angel looked like. Seven years since that first day. 

 

She missed him. Most days she would find herself wandering out of her house, looking to the beach for any sign that the seals were more than what they seemed. Were beyond the brown fur and the intelligent eyes and the wild beauty that belonged to creatures that were neither of the earth nor the sea. 

 

She watched the sky on nights when the moon thinned into fraction of what it normally was. She remember the feeling of raised, silver skin beneath her fingers and the warmth of an arm draped around her lower back. 

 

She dreamed, sometimes, that she would look out and one would rise on hind feet, step out of his brown skin and wave her too him. She would go, follow his beckoning arms until she was caught up in them, holding on to an animal and a man she would never ask to stay. She would wake up tangled in quilts that she had once sheltered him with. 

 

She never married, though not for the hope that Fynn would arrive and sweep her away into the waves, and not for a lack of trying. The fact of the matter was that she was well beyond the girlhood years where marriage was in the future, and even if she wasn’t her chances were gone. She lacked the soft skin and wide hips desired by men. It had been that way for years and there was no way to go back and change it. She didn’t want to. She liked her soap and she liked her colors. She loved the needle point that drew wonder from the eyes of her missing companion. 

 

She wondered, sometimes, if she had made him up. 

 

If she had seen seven brothers run the surf and crafted one of them into a friend she wanted, into someone special for reasons that had nothing to do with a seal fur they hid between rocks. It wasn’t like he had left her anything, it wasn’t as though she had gone to town with him and could confirm his existence to anyone else. 

 

Perhaps that was what magic was. Desire tricked into being, being made of want and imagined care that had no purpose but to comfort those who spent too much times around heavy fumes. 

 

Delilah tied off one string and traded it for the other. The sun glinted across the point, coming out from behind the clouds that floated through the sky. The needle vanished into black clothe and wormed back out. She worked like that, drawing small brown animals through the sleeve cuffs. 

 

She was so focused on the false ones that she lost track of the world around her until her knuckles were bumped and she dropped the shirt. It fell, neck widening around a soft nose. Long whiskers poked her thumbs and Delilah’s breath caught. 

 

A seal with a mans eyes stared up at her, wide with warmth and mirth. 

 

Delilah sunk off of the stone, right in front of the predator. She reached, placing her hands on his sides to pull the shirt off. Her fingers brushed a waning moon that lay across his side. 

 

When the shirt cleared his head the woman replaced it with her arms, wrapping them firmly around the creature before her. She pushed her nose into his sea damp fur, smiling into it. 

 

“I missed you,” she said softly. 

 

The fur shifted, sunk, and her arms caught around a limp pelt. She was only confused for a moment before arms more like her owns slid around her shoulders, pulling her in. 

 

“I thought you might,” Fynn’s voice was deeper, but still just as light at it ever had been. Tragedy may have touched him but he was brighter than any sun, any star, any phase of the moon.

 

Delilah held his skin and leaned into his chest, smiling wider. 

 

“You were gone for a long time,” she scolded. It was meaningless. She was too happy he was back to care how long he had been gone.

 

“Seven years,” he confirmed. He pulled back and she looked up at him, tucking his skin against her stomach. She could have made him stay that night, the one that he left under the cover of. Could have hidden the skin and forced him to remain in her company until she tired of him, as if that were possible. 

 

But she wouldn’t do that. 

 

She couldn't bare the idea of that light in his eyes, the fondness in his smile, vanishing under hurt and bitterness. He was not made to stay in one place. Not created to stay with one person. It would kill him, inside if not out, to be so separated from the sea and from the girls he entertained when he was not helping her find shark's teeth. 

 

“Always seven,” Delilah shook her head in bewilderment. “It always happens in sevens.” 

 

“What happens?” Fynn asked. He touched her hair, caught the cord she tied it with and pulled until long curls sprang around her cheeks. She never did understand why he liked her hair better that way, or his own. It got everywhere and made it harder to see. 

 

“Everything,” she shrugged, helpless. She didn’t know the answer to her question. 

 

“Everything,” Fynn mimicked. His head cocked in a gesture of curiosity that was not entirely human. His seal eyes glowed with happiness and interest. Delilah knew no one easier to read than Fynn. He wore his heart on a sleeve he only bothered with sometimes. 

 

“When things happen, they happen in sevens. Or, three sevens,” she traced the moon on his pelt. “My arm was broken in seven places, seven days after I was seven years. My house is the seventh one from the seventh street in a city whose name means seven. I met you on the seventh day of the sevenths month when you were with seven brothers,” she went on. 

 

Fynn cocked his head. 

 

“Seven is Our number,” he said, and she knew immediately which ‘Our’ he was referring to. “We go in groups of seven, we have seven children, maids shed seven tears to summon us from the seven seas,” he listed. 

 

Delilah pursed her lips. She had never heard that last part of the myth. If that was true, she would have cried for him a million times in the last seven years, rather than wait unending.

 

“How strange,” she said instead of scolding him or mopping. She didn't have time for that now. Fynn was back. This was no time for tears. 

 

“I brought you something,” he said suddenly. Delilah startled when he produced, from who knew where, the largest sharks tooth she had ever seen. It was big enough to fit over her entire palm. She took it from him and turned it over in her hands, eyes wide with wonder. 

 

“Where did you find this?” she asked, praying it hadn’t been a fight. Fynn stood and offered her his hand. 

 

“Let’s take a walk. I’ll tell you about it. 

 

_ A bond is built  _

_ With which all can live without guilt _

_ From trust and truth  _

_ Bring forth the love  _

_ From creatures below or creatures above  _

_ Be hairs old grey or brown in youth _

_ Both safe beneath their long shared quilt _


End file.
